GMU:DIY Bio: doing things with biology/Paola Stephania Calderón/20.11.2018

A new experiment is made, taking the investigation results from Caicedo around the ideal medium for growing Polycephalum/physarum.

A medium is prepared with the following quantities;

• 100 ml of water
• 12 gr of cooked potatoes
• 12 gr of oat flakes
• (mix together)
• 2gr of agar
• (mix all together and boiled 2 minutes)

The result with this medium is a thick mixture, that is not very malleable in order to put it inside the Petri dish. I tried to use it the best I can and put the samples in different spaces in the Petri dish.

After one week all samples in this experiment have mold and died.

• Day 1: I made a new mixture that has double and a half quantities of water in order to try a new medium, the medium is made like this;

• 100 ml of water
• 4 gr of cooked potatoes
• 4 gr of oat flakes
• (mix together)
• 2 gr of agar
• (mix all together and boiled 2 minutes)

• Day 2: The sample with the new medium is already growing. New samples with the same medium are made in order to have new samples. Growing Polycephalum/physarum in winter is a little difficult because of the temperatures, I have achieved that some of this samples grow in a place with a controlled temperature of around 19°C. Other samples are left in the laboratory inside the incubator with a temperature of 20°C.

• Day 10: The samples left in a place with a controlled temperature of around 19°C growth in a healthy way.

Some samples seem to have mutated or had some kind of contamination, it can be seen by the pink color inside the samples.

• Day 11: I made new samples in order to extract the polysepharum physarum from the color pink sample. After one night the samples are already growing, but again some of them still have the pink specimen inside the Petri box.